Story Start Quotes

Every ongoing character has to start somewhere.

I sat down and tried to write a story. "Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight." That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just couldn't think of the next one. After cleaning my room three times, I decided to leave Ian alone for a while because I was starting to get mad at him.

If you're gonna start a story, you start from the beginning, right?

When I start a story, I don't know where it's going.

I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.

I used to get stuck trying to find the first sentence of a story, then I realised that it was often because I didn't know what problem a character was facing in the story. As soon as I did, I could have the character trying to do something about it or have the problem whack him between the eyes.

I'm at the beginning of it. I'm Elektra's last job before the story kicks off.

I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"

There are just long gaps where I can't find a point of insertion, I can't find a good opening line, I can't find a mood that I want to write into. But once I do, once a line falls out of the air, or I get a little inkling of a subject and I recognize that, it's like the sense that a game has started.

Whenever I write a novel, most of the time it starts with barest slip of an idea.

Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel.

You need more than a beginning if you're going to start a book. If all you have is a beginning, then once you've written that beginning, you have nowhere to go.

Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "What now?", is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.

Dimitri Belikov had arrived.

Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.

Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.

The opening lines of a book are so important. You really need to somehow charm your reader. If you can't get her attention in the first pages, you may have lost her. There has to be an ambience.

My position was that the film begins with the first frame and that the film should be doing a job at that point.

In British sitcoms, you can get five minutes of nothing before the story starts.

It's important to begin a biography or any book or story with something to draw the reader in.

'EIla Enchanted' began in a marvelous writing course at New York City's The New School.

Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a 'what if.'

I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.

First scenes are super-important to me. I'll spend months and months pacing and climbing the walls trying to come up with the first scene. I drive for hours on the freeway.

Great stories start with great opening lines. 'I'm a lineman for the county' - what a great way to start a song.